1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to graphics information processing, and in particular to methods and mechanisms for scaling an image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic devices with graphics processing capabilities have become increasingly popular in recent years, especially as these devices are becoming more and more affordable to the average consumer. Many different elements and functional units, such as scaler units, are utilized to perform graphics processing within these electronic devices. Scaler units, or scalers, are typically utilized to scale the size of an image or video frame. For example, in one particular scenario, a source image may be in an original format size of 800×600 pixels and may need to be scaled to 1024×768 pixels to fit a specific display type. Typically, scalers operate serially on one pixel per clock, and scaling often involves fetching and refetching the data needed for each pixel. This type of scaling is inefficient and places too much stress on the memory of the graphics processing system.